PARTSCH: NFL doesn’t care about women

The amount of air pressure inside a football, the act of kneeling as a form of silent protest and touchdown celebrations in the end zone.
These are a few things that the National Football League, and its devoted fan base, have deemed more shameful, disrespectful and heinous than the serial abuse unleashed by a player on his wife.
For nearly a week, I have patiently waited for folks on social media to lose their minds, by way of angry memes and ranting posts, about the disrespectful and disgusting act that has been committed by an NFL player.
Yet, not a word about the deplorable human being who abused his wife over and over again.
By the way, his name is Josh Brown and he is the place kicker for the New York Giants.
I can only assume the reason that there isn’t any outrage over this is that everyone out there must have plain tuckered themselves out about San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the National Anthem or Washington Redskins cornerback Josh Norman pretending to shoot a bow and arrow after grabbing an interception.
I mean, neither one of those acts have ever forced a battered woman to try to conceal bloody wounds from a fresh beating with heavy makeup or by wearing long-sleeved shirts, or have forced a woman to call 9-1-1 while her intoxicated husband tries to force his way into a locked room or have him scream degrading and profane remarks at her, while confused and frightened children watch.
So why isn’t there outrage about what Brown did and how the NFL has responded?
Is it because Brown is a kicker and not a quarterback? Is it because Brown is a white man and not a tattooed black player?
Those two points could be debated.
What can’t be argued though is that the NFL and its fans don’t care about women, especially those who are battered, no matter how many pink jerseys and towels it sells during Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
In the aftermath of the Ray Rice case from two years ago, the NFL is supposed to have a zero-tolerance policy for domestic abuse. Commissioner Roger Goodell promised there would be a baseline six-game suspension for first-time offenders.
Yet, Brown was suspended in August for just one game following a May 2015 incident with his then-wife Molly. An incident the Giants knew about -- but instead of cutting him last year, the team opted to re-sign him this past spring to a two-year $4 million contract.
By the way, Brown received $525,000 in bonus money for his new deal, and then collected six game checks this season worth $67,820 per game before the NFL placed him on the commissioner’s exempt list. Being placed on that list means that Brown won’t play for the rest of the season but will still collect his base salary.
Then last week, numerous media outlets got their hands on 165 pages of documents released by the King’s County Sheriff’s Office concerning the 2015 case. Those documents included a journal titled “Contract for Change” that Brown wrote himself concerning the abuse he bestowed on his wife for more than a decade, including when she was pregnant.
“I became an abuser and hurt Molly physically, emotionally and verbally,” Brown wrote in a March 2014 letter to family members and friends “I viewed myself as God basically and she was my slave.”
A few of the other admissions Brown wrote:
“I carried an overwhelming sense of entitlement because I put money higher than God and I used it as a power tool.”
“I have controlled her by making her feel less human than me.”
“I have disregarded my stepsons’ feelings, and they have witnessed me abusing their mother.”
Brown’s ex-wife wrote in one of those documents, “pushes, shoves, hits me because I challenge him. ... says women like me get hit because we can’t shut up.”
Is that disgusting enough for you?
How about this little tidbit.
The NFL spent $14 million investigating the “Deflategate” case involving Tom Brady but barely spent any resources or time investigating the Brown incident.
God help someone if the air pressure is off in a football, but a woman being beaten like a dog on a chain is apparently not an issue.
Now mind you, this is the same league that every October trots out its Breast Cancer Awareness gear (player towels, cleats. etc.) and paints pink ribbons on stadium fields, and even honors survivors of the insidious disease.
Of course it is all a public relations stunt as the league lines its pockets with millions in profits from pink jersey sales and other memorabilia, with only a minute percentage of the profits going to actual cancer research.
Whenever the NFL figures out to make money off of Domestic Violence Month (which is also October and its color is purple) then maybe they will deal with the issue more.
This is also the same league that allowed its teams for decades to degrade cheerleaders.
For years, the Buffalo Bills cheerleaders (the Buffalo Jills) were required to attend a golf tournament for sponsors and do back-flips in bikinis for big-money sponsors. These same sponsors would then place bids on them to ride in their golf carts -- carts that had no extra seats, which meant the cheerleaders were forced to ride on the bidder’s laps.
If someone didn’t do it, then her time as a Jill was short-lived. There have been similar stories recounted for those cheerleaders for multiple NFL teams and lawsuits have been filed.
Unless you are shaking your pom-poms in booty shorts and a push-up bra in between plays to the delight of horny 45-year-old men wearing jerseys in the stands, or dropping $100 dollars on NFL Shop.com for women’s merchandise, the NFL absolutely without a doubt could care less about the safety of women.
For the NFL, women are simply to be treated as sex props and cash machines.
The NFL’s hypocrisy has been well-documented, so it should come as no surprise that the league dropped the ball again in thwarting domestic violence.
What really is even more shameful is the fact that many NFL fans or people in general share the league’s ambivalence towards the issue. You see if fans really cared about someone’s mother, sister, girlfriend, wife or daughter being abused then the outrage would be widespread but sadly it is not.
We can no longer hide behind the veil of not knowing what is going on or that this is a new phenomenon to deal with it. There are no more excuses to be used.
Like the old saying says, “fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.”
Isn’t it time we stop allowing the NFL to fool us on domestic violence?